Anti-War Vets Will Turn It Off

“Da 5 Bloods”Netflix film by Spike Lee, 2020

Lee has made a movie about a group of U.S. black soldiers who fought in the American War in Vietnam and then return for a ‘visit.’  But when they get there it is more like a re-run of that war and they’re still not on the right side.  It is a buddy/heist movie whose lead character Paul is a MAGA-hat wearing brother suffering from PTSD.  4 of the ‘bloods’ arrive in Vietnam / Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City to recover the body of their 5^th ‘blood’ – ‘Stormin’ Norman,’ who died in a helicopter rescue mission and was left behind.  And oh, to get 80-100 ingots of gold they buried while on that mission.  Evidently wearing all that Hollywood bling is starting to rot Lee’s mind. 

Stormin’ Norman was  a ‘60s radical, so they attempt to square his ideals with their greed.  It doesn’t work, even with clichéd overtones of ‘money is the root of all evil.’  Paul is oddly joined by his son David, who watches his father melt down in the trek through the jungle.  

What is wrong with this movie is that the Vietnamese – barring a prostitute one of the bloods had a baby with, and a former pro-U.S. ARVN guide – are all shown as angry or neo-Viet Cong killers and thieves, oddly allied with a scheming Frenchman.  So we have 2 MAGA stereotypes to hate.  The battle is over the gold of course – CIA gold.  The bloods claim it is their own and so do the Vietnamese.  If you think about it, it is on Vietnamese soil so it belongs to Vietnam, especially as payment for that brutal and destructive war.  It might even have had South Vietnamese government origins.  But instead here CIA equals ‘Black America’ and these are ‘reparations!’  No mention of reparations to Vietnam.  Gun battles ensue, the evil Frenchman and his Vietnamese allies all die and the remaining American heroes get the gold.

They partially donate some of the money to Black Lives Matter and a land-mine clearing group in Vietnam as sort of a moralistic laundering operation, set to irrelevant shots of MLK and Malcolm X.  And all is right in this stupid and fake world.

In the real world U.S. GI’s returning to Vietnam are not called ‘baby-killers’ or accused of killing someone’s ‘mama-san or papa-san’ by random Vietnamese.  They don’t go back for gold or even bodies.  They tour the battlefields, maybe revisit where they were stationed and perhaps help Agent Orange or mine-clearing programs in Vietnam.  They meet with government officials or former NVA/NLF soldiers.  They drink in the bars and take the trains or boats. Some even return to live and build a home.  If they have kids, they might actually bring them back to the U.S. or visit them on a regular basis in Vietnam – they don’t just bestow a cheap kiss. 

         

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) March in 1972 NYC

Nor would NLF troops allow a crashed plane to sit on the jungle floor for even a second without checking it out.  Unlike Lee’s quartet, most black soldiers strongly opposed the war and some acted on that.  This crew is mostly apolitical about the war, in spite of their references to Norman. The film also implies that armed criminal gangs operate freely in Vietnam, even though Vietnamese gun laws are totally restrictive regarding civilians.  As to bodies, the American War in Vietnam (AWiV) has the most recovered bodies of any U.S. war in history, so this narrative just shadows those damn MIA flags that fly over police stations.  Paul even claims early-on that he was called a ‘baby-killer’ when he returned, another right-wing Vietnam myth, so bad that a whole book has been written about them.  So much MAGA bullshit here…Rambo would be proud.

The liberal fantasy movie Black Panther also oddly identified with the CIA, the U.S.’s state security service.  The CIA has been implicated in assassinations, funding and covert wars in support of apartheid and against black nationalism and black revolutionaries.  They played a role in assassinating MLK. So is CIA gold ‘black’ gold?

Lee’s last movie, BlacKKKlansman, was a paen to a real African-American cop who infiltrated the KKK (and also an anti-racist group, the International Committee Against Racism, which Lee does not mention.)  But as we know, some police across the country are closely associated with various rightist and racist groups.  So whose police story do we believe, Lee’s or our own lying eyes?  That applies to this movie too. 

So what is up with Lee?  His net worth is now $40M, he is a tenured professor and owns a film production company.  He lives in a 9,000 square foot town-home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and has an estate on Martha’s Vineyard too.  That’s what!       

Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box upper left:  “Red Hook Summer,” “BlacKKKlansman,” (both by Lee) “Malcolm X” and “Black Panther.”

The Kulture Kommissar

July 2, 2020